


life is a croaking psalm

by rebelbexx



Category: His Dark Materials (TV), His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-19
Updated: 2019-12-19
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:15:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21864340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rebelbexx/pseuds/rebelbexx
Summary: Marisa first feels the baby on a Tuesday
Relationships: Lord Asriel/Marisa Coulter, Lyra Belacqua & Marisa Coulter
Comments: 7
Kudos: 83





	life is a croaking psalm

Marisa first feels the baby on a Tuesday. She’s reading, gathering information for her book and the flutters overwhelm her. It’s like a soft gut punch, the cracking of a melon against a hard surface. The midwife her useless husband had sent for said this would happen. _The quickening_ she called it; an archaic word for the way her body creates life, the way her body _gives_ life. This moment is supposed to be transcendent; Aristotle believed it was the moment the fetus became a whole being, a soul born from love. But Marisa feels no joy, no life altering bolt of lightening at the movement. She feels her sin move inside her and thinks _in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children_ and Eve was right, the despair she feels is acute.

Marisa’s punishment for her sins – the sin of bedding a man other than her husband, the sin of ambition while being a woman, the sin of love – is this cluster of cells growing inside the shelter of her body. How strange she felt when she realized, how detached. The blood never came and she knew. She knew. Her first thought was not of excitement or even dread, her first thought was _why me? Why am I being punished?_ And then God underscored his humility by driving Asriel into a rage, by sowing chaos into her compartmentalized life so that Marisa was forced to work overtime, to smooth over the fragile egos of men while doing the hard work of nourishing this life inside a body that did not want it.

The baby moves again and Marisa lays a careful hand over her stomach, repelled and entranced by the way her skin juts out, the way her body makes room for the child cocooned in the safe haven of her womb. Her hand moves counter to the flutters and Marisa thinks _this is mine_ and it takes her back. From the moment Marisa learned of this sin, until now, she has resisted thinking of the baby as anything other than a parasite living on all her body has to offer, like it’s father. Asriel had taken from her body, deep, feral, and full to the brim until she could take no more, and then, like Eve, she had paid for her moments of pleasure.

Asriel had taken off for the north days after she told him of their entwined fates, and it was left to Marisa to convince her husband that her infidelity was a figment of his imagination, to show him with her body that their marriage was intact and here, growing inside her, was the proof. 

Another sin carried in the cradle of her hips. 

If she had any thought that Asriel would be pleased, that he would touch her tenderly and reverently, an Oxford Madonna, she was wrong. He was not that man, and if he was, she would have never loved him as she did. They both knew that.

Marisa hopes that the child is a boy, free to move in the world with purpose and determination and maybe, maybe, Asriel would not have cause to despise the creature as much. She hopes the life she is growing is not a girl, she hopes she will never have to instruct her daughter on the ways in which it is necessary to get men to take you seriously. She hopes she will never have to instruct at all. 

The kicks stop, the baby worn from the effort, and Marisa feels a bone deep hunger inside her, a gaping hole that begs to be filled and nothing will satisfy it. Marisa gives and gives and gives to this life, this leech inside her and it is never enough. Nothing will ever be enough; _in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children_ and the sorrow is like the wide bleak landscape of the north where there is nothing and everything all at once.


End file.
